How to Pick an SEO-Friendly Theme for Your Business

Written by
Daria Chetvertak
Jul 18, 2022
3 min read

New website owners often make the same old mistake. They begin to think about SEO after the website has been launched. It’s a bad strategy.

First, you need to make the site understandable to crawlers so that they can easily explore (scan) and add your content to the index. Second, your website needs to pass the quality standards that search engines set so that it can join the SERP ranking race. The theme you install plays a role in both of these aspects. Keep them in mind while selecting a website template. 

Let’s look at the most important points that will help you choose an excellent template for improving SEO:

Page Experience 

Page experience is Google’s ranking factor. It’s a set of signals that measure how website visitors perceive the experience of interacting with a page. These include:

  • Core Web Vitals: These three metrics score how quickly page content loads, how quickly a browser loading a webpage can respond to a user’s input, and how stable the content is as it loads in the browser.
  • HTTPS encryption: Today, users get the respective warning whenever they access a non-HTTPS website via one of the popular browsers. It affects not only rankings but also users’ trust.
  • No intrusive interstitials: Pages that show intrusive interstitials provide a poorer experience to users than other pages where content is immediately accessible.

Thus, you need a website theme that scores high on all of these metrics. 

Mobile-Friendly and Responsive Design

Responsive design implies creating pages that render well across a variety of devices and screen sizes. It’s essential for SEO as it’s no secret that in 2018, Google officially made a move to mobile-first indexing, and now the mobile version of the content is chosen as a primary one by default. Keep in mind that 63% of users search from mobile devices, so choose a theme that accommodates different ways users access and interact with your website.

Valid Coding

For the website to get on the top of Google’s SERP, the template you are choosing should be developed according to up-to-date coding standards. It should be compatible with all popular browsers, have valid HTML and CSS, and work well with mobile devices.

Website Structure

Well-structured navigation and internal linking will make it easier for search bots to crawl your pages, improving their chances of ranking high. Moreover, a good website structure helps you to gain the SERP features. Finally, it will also increase the quality of your website UX. So, when choosing a website theme, pay attention to the layout structure—its navigation, usability, and logic.

Optimized Header Tags

The headlines are the first thing you scan across a website page. With the help of header tags, both users and search engines can understand what the content is about. A good website template has these optimized right out of the box.

Schema Markup

Schema markup is microdata that makes your website’s content not just visible, but also understandable to search engine bots. As a result, your pages can be presented in a more attractive way on SERP (e.g., rich snippets), which can indirectly translate into more website visits and a higher CTR. 

Finally, choose your theme

Now, you know exactly what to take into account when choosing website SEO themes and can easily decide on the best option for your project. 

To make your search easier, we have prepared a list of the best templates that can ensure better SEO performance for your website. Check out the article—maybe you’ll find your perfect theme.

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